Heaven Can Wait: Against Michael Kazin: Responds
Kazin, Michael
SUSAN JACOBY writes under a misconception. I did not advocate that all American progressives should justify their politics by referring to the Sermon on the Mount or other biblical passages that...
...In the end, the question of religion in politics should be a pragmatic one—what are the consequences of taking Jacoby's position or mine...
...How can secular progressives ally with religious ones without allowing "God's politics" to become the only legitimate kind...
...history, their faith and their rhetoric often served causes we can still applaud— the abolition of slavery, the rights of labor and women and Native Americans, opposition to militarism, and more...
...I did not advocate that all American progressives should justify their politics by referring to the Sermon on the Mount or other biblical passages that imply that God is just...
...It would be impossible to reinstate the old order at a time when students come from a diversity of faiths with their own holy books and rituals...
...If secularists continue to condemn and ridicule Christian progressives who take their faith into the public arena, we only affirm the widespread view that liberals are only tolerant and rational toward people as "enlightened" as they...
...In fact, that's precisely what made it possible for both pietists and atheists to work alongside one another in the black freedom movement of the 1950s and 1960s...
...He thus firmly opposes official school prayers and funding for church groups who proselytize as they hand out free lunches and job tips...
...Nothing he suggests justifies Jacoby's fear that it would be a "recipe for civic disaster" or provide a fresh opening for anti-Semitism...
...MICHAEL KAZIN is on the editorial board of Dissent and teaches history at Georgetown University...
...Unless either of us censures the other's mode of argument, there's no cause for alarm...
...88 n DISSENT / Spring 2006...
...One can respond to this fundamental aspect of our political culture by seeking to change it...
...Insofar as believers—the great majority of Americans— derive many if not most of their moral insights from their beliefs, they must mingle religion and politics, again without equating the two...
...Or one can assume, as I do, that the United States is not, has never been, and, for the foreseeable future, is not likely to become that kind of nation...
...Jacoby, steadfast in her secularism, would like religion to become a private matter, much as it has been in modern France, where the only permissible public identity is that of "citizen...
...Voicing alarm at the rhetoric of such fellow moralists as Jim Wallis is thus self-defeating...
...On the other hand, we can view Wallis and his counterparts from other denominations and religions as co-workers in a common struggle to build a more decent and egalitarian world...
...Rather, my point was that Christian activists and politicians have always done so...
...Decades ago, there was a danger that Jewish kids would be bullied into mouthing praise of Jesus, but most public schools today avoid any discussion of religion at all—even in history classes...
...But since the Second World War, with the exception of the black freedom movement, evangelical zeal has mostly benefited the right...
...To my knowledge, no leader of the Christian right has proposed doing so...
...Wallis seeks sanction from the Bible for a living wage, while I—and perhaps Jacoby, too—would simply call it a requirement for a humane society...
...His latest book is A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan...
...The last thing we need today is a culture war on the left...
...Noah Feldman's Divided by God only sketches out ideas for how to draw the line on the church-state question...
...For much of U.S...
...In a New York Review of Books piece about Jimmy Carter's Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis (February 9, 2006), Garry Wills pointed a way forward: "None of us," Wills wrote, "even those who believe in DISSENT / Spring 2006 n 87 ARGUMENTS the separation of church and state, professes a separation of morality and politics...
...And I've yet to meet a Christian liberal who's intolerant of talk about social justice that doesn't mention God...
...Then the question arises: what should we do about it...
...When it comes to the place of religion in the state, Feldman calls for adherence to "a simple slogan: no coercion and no money...
Vol. 53 • April 2006 • No. 2
